The present invention relates to preliminary processing of cured tobacco leaves for the purpose of making them into tobacco products such as filler for cigarettes. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for removing the tips of tobacco leaves prior to threshing.
The processing of tobacco leaves as conventionally practiced involves threshing of the tobacco to remove the stems from the lamina or leafy portion. In the past, tobacco arrived at the stemmery in hands. Each hand consisted of a plurality of leaves oriented in the same direction so that their stems projected. Another tobacco leaf was wrapped around the projecting butt end of the stems. When hands of tobacco were received at the stemmery, they could be easily tipped and the tips of the tobacco leaves processed separately from the rest of the tobacco leaves, thereby reducing the breakage and damage to the lamina found in the tips caused by threshing.
More recently, Burley and Maryland tobaccos have been packed in small bales on the farm. In packing a bale of tobacco, a handful of leaves is placed with stem-ends oriented toward one side of a container used to form the bale. Another handful of leaves is placed at the other side of the container used to form the bale with the tips overlapping the tips of the first handful of leaves. This is continued until the container for the bale is partially full and then the stack is compacted. The process is repeated until the container is full. The bale is bound and then removed from the container. This method of packing tobacco leaves in bales is well known in the tobacco industry.
Tobacco arriving at the stemmery in bales, rather than hands, is not easily tipped in the manner that the hands of tobacco were tipped. As an alternative to tipping, the entire bale can be put through the threshing process to separate the lamina from the stem. However, putting the entire tobacco leaf through the threshing process unnecessarily degrades the quality of the tip ends of the tobacco leaf which contain little or no stem structure, thus reducing the yield of strip of good size for filling capacity.
Heretofore, attempts have been made to mechanically tip bales of tobacco packed in the standard rectangular tobacco bale with varying degrees of success. Sherrill et al, U.S. Pat. No. 3,511,122 discloses the use of band saws for cutting baled tobacco. However, the apparatus disclosed in Sherill requires the use of a long, band type saw to cut the entire bale at one time. This method disregards the fact that the length of the tobacco leaves in the three foot long tobacco bale may vary from less than eighteen inches to approximately thirty inches. Depending on the length of leaves stacked in the tobacco bale, the individual leaves might be cut twice by the two blades, therefore producing a tipped section, a midrib section, and a butt section. Thus, the tip of the tobacco leaf on longer leaves would be processed with the butt end of the tobacco and the midrib section of the tobacco leaf would be processed as the tips were in tobacco bales packed with shorter leaves. This would eliminate the advantages produced by tipping since the midrib section often contains large and objectionable stems and veins. Adjusting the blades farther from the centerline will not correct the problem since the amount of tip removed will then include a substantial portion of the midrib.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide a bale tipping apparatus for removing the tips of baled tobacco leaves suitable for use regardless of the size of the individual leaves processed in each tobacco bale.